Flip-flopping, a Dissertation

At 6:52 p.m. on the evening of November 1, 1955 United Airlines Flight 629 took off from Stapleton Airfield in Denver, Colorado.  Eleven minutes later the Douglas DC 6B disintegrated in the air and plunged into a sugar beet field near Longmont, CO.  All 44 people on board died. 

            A bomb, 17 pounds of dynamite with a timer, had exploded in passenger Daisie King’s luggage.  It had been placed there by her son, John Gilbert “Jack” Graham.  At check-in Mrs. King paid a $27 fine because the bags were overweight.   She asked her son if she really needed all that much in her luggage.  Cold as ice he had said, “Yes, mother, I’m sure you will need it.”  Jack Gilbert had then turned to his wife, given her some money and told her to buy three life insurance policies on his mother’s flight. 

            There was ample evidence at the scene of the disaster that a bomb was involved.  It was the first major act of criminal violence against a U. S. airliner. Thirteen days later, the FBI arrested Jack Graham.  He was convicted on May 5, 1956 and executed in the gas chamber of the Colorado State Penitentiary in Canyon City on January 11, 1957.

            A silent witness to this case, its history, ramifications conclusion and aftermath was a very serious and impressionable nine year old girl living in Denver.  I was that girl.  [I do admit to being a bit of a strange child.]  I read everything I could find about this crime.  This was the first trial in the United States covered by television and a saw what was going on as well.  At this time, the death penalty was a given and when Graham was found guilty and sentenced to execution I felt no moral ambiguity about the findings of the court.  I continued to follow the Graham bombing up to the day of the execution.  That is when I had an epiphany.  The execution did not make me feel better.  I had assumed that it would change things: that the crime wouldn’t seem as frightening; the innocents wouldn’t be as dead; life wouldn’t seem so uncertain or death so arbitrary.  I was naïve.  I was wrong.

            As young as I was, I started to become a person opposed to the death penalty.  By the time I was in college (a Barry Goldwater conservative, a good Lutheran and certainly no hippie) I was comfortably against the death penalty.  That lasted until I became a parent.  With the hyper-concern nature gives mothers I started reading about people who unrepentantly committed crimes that seemed to revoke their right to life.  Many people who I thought were safely removed from society were being given comfortable lives in prison, or worse, released on parole despite histories of violent crimes.  The laws I thought made the death penalty unnecessary were proving inadequate to the job.  These criminals were a danger to me and mine.  My thinking changed.  I don’t like capital punishment and would be open to a good alternative, but until that occurs I am now, thoughtfully in favor of it. 

            To some of you, that is flip-flopping.  To me it is intelligent reconsideration.  I do not have the hubris that makes me think I am infallibly correct on all issues at all times.  Truth does not come from God’s mouth to my ear.  I have to make the best decision I can, with the best information I have, and humbly be willing to change when better information comes to light.  I expect my elected leaders to do the same.

            Remember, Ronald Regan was once a Democrat, and keep the faith.